oot. Such a little while since she was a baby asleep in
this very bed! Some of the baby lines were in her face still. It was
hard to believe that now she was a woman--to be in a few days a wife.

She covered her gently, and stole away nodding and smiling. The ghost
was laid.

As for Kitty, she had gone to bed not at all convinced that Hugh
Guinness was dead. It was a more absorbing Mystery, that was all. But it
did not keep her awake. She did not spin any romantic fancies about him
or his dark history. If he were alive, he was very likely as
disagreeable and freckle-faced a man as he had been a boy. But the
secret was her own--a discovery; a very different affair from this
marriage, which had been made and fitted on her by outsiders.

CHAPTER VII.

"Gone! You don't mean that your mother and Mr. Guinness have gone to
leave you for a month!" Mr. Muller was quite vehement with annoyance and
surprise.

"At least a month," said Catharine calmly. "Mrs. Guinness always goes
with my father on his summer journey for books, and this year she
has--well, things to buy for me."

It was the wedding-dress she meant, he knew. He leaned eagerly in at the
window, where he stood hoping for a blush. But none came. "Purl two and
knit one," said Kitty to her crochet.

"I certainly do not consider it safe or proper for you to be left
alone," he blustered mildly after a while.

"There is Jane," glancing back at the black figure waddling from the
kitchen to the pump.

"Jane! I shall send Maria up to stay with you, Catharine."

"You are very kind! It is so pleasant to be cared for!" with a little
gush of politeness and enthusiasm. "But dear Maria finds the house damp.
I will not be selfish. You must allow me to be alone."

He looked at her furtively. Was there, after all, an obstinate,
unbendable back-bone under the soft feathers of this his nestling dove?
He was discomfited at every turn this evening. He had hoped that Kitty
would notice that his little imperial had been retrimmed; and he
had bought a set of sleeve-buttons, antique coins, at a ruinous price,
in hopes they would please her. She looked at neither the one nor the
other. Yet she had a keen eye for dress--too keen an eye indeed. Only
last night she had spent an hour anxiously cutting old Peter's hair and
beard, and Mr. Muller could not but remember that he was a handsome
young fellow, and do what she would with Peter, he was old and beaked
like a parrot. "Besides, he